


Piercing

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Adulthood, And Growing Up, Bodily Autonomy, Earrings, Friendship, Gen, Genesis' Earring, Humor, Loopholes, and trusting your friends, neofeudal capitalist dystopia, this is a story about piercing your ears, while being a supersoldier manufactured by a megalomaniacal megacorporation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-12 23:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13557939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: "There’s also," Sephiroth said, "the paperwork to consider. I despise filling out the NT-22-B.”Genesis knew his face had assumed an unflattering expression of bafflement in trying to work out the connection between ear-piercing and paperwork.Angeal interjected in a rather obnoxious tone of well-meaning correction, “That’s the approval form for decorating your company-issued quarters.”“No,” Sephiroth corrected right back, “it’s the one for cosmetic alterations to Shinra property.”





	Piercing

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote the first part of this during last year’s Christmas shopping. Like, I was worn out by Crowded Mall so I sat down in the food court and scribbled in a notebook about teenage SOLDIERs, and expressing yourself through accessories, and how the heck does property law work on this forsaken Planet?

Legally speaking, one was considered an adult either at the point where one established a self-supporting income, or at the age of sixteen.

Socially it was, of course, more complicated, and older people could easily continue calling you ‘kid’ into your thirties, but Genesis Rhapsodos had considered himself an adult for years already when, still a little way short of turning eighteen, he made First Class.

Of the many privileges afforded SOLDIERs First Class, one was a total immunity from the constraints of uniform. Angeal, who though several months his junior and somewhat slower to declare his own adulthood was already in many ways an old fuddy-duddy, did not consider this an important aspect of the promotion, but Genesis seized with delight on the opportunity to wear what he liked—nothing too dreadfully impractical, of course, and for the most part he did still wear the uniform itself; a SOLDIER entirely out of uniform, after all, was difficult to distinguish from a civilian.

Second Class purple had not flattered him at all; it contrasted with his hair in entirely the wrong way and brought out the green in his eyes, when he preferred to accentuate the blue. The black was better, and went well with anything. But since the uniform was sleeveless, there was nothing more natural than finishing the outfit with a coat. He’d run through several already, searching for the perfect style.

A month and a half after the promotion, for his eighteenth birthday, his parents sent him nine hundred gil. Genesis went out and blew it all on an ornate silver earring he spotted glinting from the window of a Sector Two shop. This was a level of impractical indulgence he generally refrained from, since a _total_ lack of discipline in a man’s budget left him either swiftly unable to maintain his preferred lifestyle, or rapidly submerged in debt, and he would prefer to avoid either indignity.

Angeal commented on the bright little thing, of course, when he saw swinging gaily just over Genesis’ shoulder—not quite as heavy as it looked, but still a pendulous weight on a very narrow wire.

“Oh, it’s a gift from my mother,” Genesis said easily.

Angeal’s face tightened slightly, because he knew perfectly well what that meant. “You’re going to wear it every day, aren’t you?” was all he said, with all the longsuffering patience in his soul.

He won the smug reply, “ _She guides us to bliss, her gift everlasting._ ”

* * *

It came up again a few months later, after Genesis had served his second tour of war duty as a First. The front had cooled recently, which meant that service in Wutai was largely a lot of sitting still and being ready for deadly threats that never materialized. Nerve-wracking and short in opportunities for glory.

It meant that troops, SOLDIER especially, on Midgar rotation tended to spar a little too hard, working off that pent-up tension in an environment where a lingering injury was not so likely to be the death of them if the long-awaited attack finally came. Genesis was fresh from winning one of these matches against one of the better Seconds as Angeal lectured him down the hall and into the officer’s lounge on the forty-seventh floor.

“You could have beaten him without hurting him so badly, if you hadn’t been protecting your earring.”

Genesis had had to pass up a good opening in the first minute of the fight, due to dodging a blow by several extra inches. He _knew_ already, Angeal didn’t need to point it out. “It cost nine hundred gil of my mother’s money,” he pointed out in his most aristocratic tones. “As long as I’m still winning handily, I want no reproach.”

Sephiroth, sitting directly in the middle of the most comfortable sofa in the lounge with a book in his lap because he was not-so-secretly an asshole, shook his head at this. O _ho_ then.

Genesis rested one knee lazily on the arm of the sofa and grinned down at their young General. “Come, speak up. I know you are secretly admiring my adornment.”

They were alone in the lounge, the three of them, or he wouldn’t have risked the brush-off this was likely to net him. Genesis had known Sephiroth well enough to nod to almost since he joined SOLDIER at fifteen, but it was only on his and Angeal’s ascension to First that the only First younger than they had begun to have time for them. Of the dozen or so living Firsts the company tended to have at a time, they were the first in years to get the promotion before turning twenty. He supposed they were the only peers Sephiroth had.

Not that Sephiroth seemed particularly anxious to _acknowledge_ them as such. He seemed to like their company better than most people’s, had even been known to seek them out, and they were almost definitely his friends, but if Sephiroth had gone to university he would probably have double-majored in bloody slaughter and interpersonal indifference. To speak with him uninvited was to accept high odds of being cut dead. But with no witnesses but Angeal, that didn’t much matter.

Sephiroth snapped his book shut, one-handed—it was a _Wutaian tactical manual,_ Goddess preserve him _._ “It is impractical in every way and represents a loss of nearly a thousand gil if dropped or stolen. None of my feelings are admiration.”

“Well, at least you’re admitting you feel _something_.”

Sephiroth rolled his eyes and got up to shelve his book. “I’m sure your mother would understand if you saved it for special occasions.”

It was sort of funny that Sephiroth thought Genesis would change what he wore to please his mother. Even _Angeal_ didn’t make life decisions around what his mother would prefer, especially if she wasn’t there to see. If she’d knitted him mittens, he of course wouldn’t throw them away, but they would probably never see daylight either. (He might eventually find someone in need to give them away to, as that would make an adequate excuse for not owning them anymore.)

Genesis pointed his nose upward, striking a pose. “A sense of style is not something a man can be expected to restrict to special occasions.”

Of course, there was no reason to expect Sephiroth to understand that. Sephiroth displayed a peculiar tendency to exercise shirtless where other people could see him and then _not_ capitalize on the ensuing opportunities for seduction, and the hair just seemed to _keep on growing_ , but otherwise he never really took advantage of the relaxed First Class uniform standards. Maybe when he finished sprouting upward like a weed he’d find something. Maybe Genesis could take him shopping. Not accessorizing was a waste of that hair, it really was.

Genesis held up a thumb and forefinger at right angles, framing Sephiroth as if for a painting, as he turned back to face the room. “You should get one too—nothing long like this, on you it would just get tangled in hair. I can see you with, hm, ruby studs. Or emerald, I suppose.” Most reds would tend to wash Sephiroth out if you dressed him in much of them, and be tricky to balance with his eyes as an accent color, though it would probably be striking if you got it right.

“Pass.”

“Oh, come on.”

Angeal spoke up from the corner where he’d taken a seat. “If he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t have to.”

“I don’t,” Sephiroth said dryly, “especially relish sitting still and letting strangers puncture any part of my body.”

This was, Genesis supposed, a valid argument, though one vulnerable both to insinuations of cowardice and to innuendo. While Genesis was deciding whether either was worthwhile, the youngest First added contemplatively, “There’s also the paperwork to consider. I despise filling out the NT-22-B.”

Genesis knew his face had assumed an unflattering expression of bafflement trying to work out the connection between ear-piercing and paperwork—a subject which Sephiroth rarely complained about in the first place, even when Genesis fished blatantly for commiseration.

Angeal interjected in a rather obnoxious tone of well-meaning correction, “That’s the approval form for decorating your company-issued quarters.”

“No,” Sephiroth corrected right back, in one of _his_ more cool and condescending tones of voice, “it’s the one for cosmetic alterations to Shinra property.”

The lack of any real emotion in this statement meant that it took longer than it should have for his friends to connect the words to their only logical significance.

Their eyes met, nearly identical in shock, and it was Genesis who blurted for both of them, “Shinra _owns_ you?” He wished as soon as he said it that he had said it differently; either made up for Sephiroth’s lack of drama with his own, more profound and poetic emotional reaction, or else matched his level of nonchalance, because the slightly strangled note served neither purpose.

“Of course not.”

Even more calm, detached and withering and Genesis was already swelling with humiliated frustration when Sephiroth continued with a faint but perfectly detectable bitterness, “Slavery has not been legally practiced on this continent in seven hundred years. I am an independent individual capable of self-determination; as evidence of this, I have a contract of employment and draw a salary.

“My _body_ , however,” he continued, even the bitterness gone again leaving his apparent feelings on the subject no worse than vague exasperation, “is a Shinra Company product. I am liable for any damages not incurred in the line of duty.”

Angeal’s shock looked like it was threatening to turn toward rage, but Genesis was still caught in numb incredulity. “That is,” he said at length, “some of the most perverse hair-splitting I have ever heard.”

Sephiroth shrugged. “It’s not so different from the rest of you. Deserting SOLDIERs are held liable for theft of intellectual property in addition to breach of contract, you know. It’s why retirement is so complicated.”

It was very different from that, but from his chair in the corner Angeal could grasp the continuity, could see why _Sephiroth_ thought it was the same.

He’d almost found words to reply in, when a ghost of a smile crossed their senior’s face. “Why do you think my hair is this long?” He pointedly stirred the silver mane that fell more than a foot below his elbows, a mocking bend to his eyebrows aimed at neither of them. “I was put in charge of my own routine maintenance when I was eight, but Hojo required me to fill out all the same paperwork the assistants always had, for record-keeping purposes. In a fit of rebellion when I was eleven I stopped submitting NT-22-Bs for approval and just let it grow.”

When they’d met him at fourteen, it had already been well past his shoulders. Genesis noted with a pang of annoyance that this revelation meant also that Sephiroth’s hair stayed that smooth down until near the tips _without any trimming ever_ , which suggested it really was all but indestructible, like the man himself. Infinite in mystery was _that_ gift, for certain.

Angeal thought, meanwhile, that the worst thing was the way Sephiroth, brisk and wry, seemed to consider this primarily a story about what a shithead Hojo was, not about the inhumanity of his childhood. Of course, his pride would never have allowed him to tell the latter sort of story.

“Did you ever consider,” Angeal asked—a little bit sardonic, rather than letting himself get _upset_ and put Sephiroth any more on the spot, “cutting your hair and just…not filing the paperwork?”

Sephiroth stared at him for a second as if trying to figure something out—probably whether Angeal really thought he was that stupid. “Of course I _thought_ of it,” he said, “but that would have been a direct provocation, not a mere symbolic bit of rebellion. That is not generally wise when one has a legal guardian like Professor Hojo.”

This defeatism, not matter how dryly expressed, was apparently too much for Genesis. “You’re an adult now, aren’t you? Live a little, Goddess’ sake! _Cut your hair without asking for permission._ ”

Sephiroth’s hand rose protectively to the locks falling over one shoulder. “I like it,” he objected. And of course he did, Angeal thought, of course, because _they_ might be seeing his coiffure suddenly as a symbol of his inability to do something as simple as trim his own hair without written approval from its _owners,_ but to him it was a sign of his power to refuse to ask in the first place, to rebel within the system.

Angeal was not a cruel man, but neither had he ever been an especially empathetic one. Pain he could easily _see_ mattered to him, even if he was unable to do anything about it—even his enemies he would never force to suffer longer than it took to kill them—but hidden pain he rarely thought to guess at, and Sephiroth never let any show. In this moment, though, he found himself looking at his younger, higher-ranking friend and feeling…

…he hoped it was not pity. He was sure Sephiroth did not want pity. An identity built entirely within loopholes, though…it sounded difficult.

“Fine!” Genesis exclaimed. “Leave the hair. Get your ear pierced _without asking._ If you aren’t comfortable going to a professional, I can do it myself with a potato and a needle!”

Sephiroth recoiled slightly, paused, blinked, and asked, “What is the role of the potato?”

“You need something firm the needle can penetrate, to backstop the earlobe,” Genesis explained. He’d had his piercing done professionally in Midgar, Angeal knew, but had considered it several times before they left home, and interrogated Cissy Gorkin about how she’d done hers—or rather, how her cousin Sukey had—at length. In the end, he’d opted for not provoking his father when he still had a use for his financial support in his plans to join SOLDIER, and—oh. No wonder he was so upset about this. He was taking it personally.

“It barely hurts,” Genesis was assuring their friend airily. “And not for long—you don’t want to Cure or take a full potion before the piercing heals because there’s the possibility of the skin closing over the stud, but a small sip of potion generally hurries it along nicely. _My friend, your desire is the bringer of life, the Gift of the Goddess,_ ” he added, which was Genesis for reassurance.

Sephiroth’s expression had shifted at some point to one of serious consideration, which made Angeal open his mouth and ask, “How big is the fine?”

Identical expressions of surprise at his interruption, which was sort of amusing. “Unauthorized decoration of company quarters that requires a paint job usually gets fined at around eight hundred gil,” Angeal contextualized. “Minor repairs can push it up to two thousand.”

Most of that was punitive, of course; repainting a room cost twenty gil in materials and perhaps fifty in employee time.

“…I am rather more expensive than a single barrack.” Angeal winced a little, but Sephiroth’s tone was merely dry. “On the other hand, it is hard to argue that the earlobes are a functional part of the body, or that any restorative work will be required….”

“Well, I’ll pay a third of whatever it is, if you go ahead with this.”

Depending on how Shinra chose to respond, this might take a while to manage, or at best take a large bite out of his savings, but it would be worth it. He wasn’t about to encourage Sephiroth to take a symbolic stand and then leave him to handle the consequences alone.

Genesis looked like he thought this had been a crass subject to bring up, but Angeal could tell Sephiroth understood what he meant.

* * *

Genesis kept a small apartment in Sector Three: larger, more comfortable, and above all more _private_ than Angeal’s company quarters. (Sephiroth’s assigned quarters were similar in size to Genesis’, but had neither of the other recommendations.) They convened there on a Shivasday evening soon after the decision was made—Genesis had muttered something safely out of Sephiroth’s hearing about not giving him a chance to lose his nerve, but the actual urgency was that their time assigned to Midgar together was prone to ending abruptly.

Of course, Angeal wasn’t technically needed for the process, but his presence as a buffer tended to help. He leaned against the doorframe between Genesis’ kitchen and his main room, which the occupant had the airs to refer to as his ‘parlour’ on the basis that it contained the sofa.

This furnishing was presently occupied by a somewhat jumpy-looking Sephiroth (it was all in the eyes, and the tightness at the corners of his mouth) with his hair tied back, and a cheerful antiseptic-wielding Genesis, while on a clean white hand towel on the coffee table beside them were laid out the rest of the assembled supplies and implements.

Angeal was fairly sure this operation was being accomplished with a darning needle that had had its point filed down to great sharpness by the careful application of a whetstone.

He hoped this went well. Symbols mattered.

Genesis for his part seemed greatly pleased by the operation itself. “You’ll have no cause to regret this,” he proclaimed, rubbing circles onto Sephiroth’s right earlobe with a cotton bud over and around the target dot he had placed. (This was the second attempt; the first marker’s ink had turned out to be soluble in alcohol.) “Angeal would never consider it, he’s never interested in anything that isn’t practical. Even his garden in Banora had almost no flowers!”

Angeal, as always, forbore to point out to his friend that that garden had been one of the things keeping him and his mother fed, and its shortage of flowers was not out of any opposition to them. The charge was true enough, after all. He didn’t care for extraneous things. He had his impracticalities, but he preferred to pare them down to their essences. There were needs beyond the physical; acknowledging them was different from frivolity. “I don’t trust small sharp objects,” was all he said, very dryly.

“Oh, and what do you consider _small?_ ” Genesis asked archly, gesturing toward the immensity of the Buster sword with the cotton bud and sending droplets of alcohol-based disinfectant over Sephiroth’s nose. “Consider the scale he has to work with,” he confided to Sephiroth in a theatrical aside. Sephiroth tended to run through swords even more quickly than the average SOLDIER, but he tended to prefer long thin blades that favored speed, so Genesis had occasionally been able to recruit him as support in making fun of the Hewley Buster.

Angeal tipped his skull against the doorframe. “Mm…Rapier on down.”

Genesis’ pantomime of offended dignity got them through to the part where he actually did cut a potato in half, and pressed the flat side of one segment to the back of Sephiroth’s ear. Sephiroth looked like a wet cat and Angeal had to look away to keep from laughing. “Ready?” asked Genesis, picking up the large, very sharp sterilized needle in his right hand.

“Get on with it.”

“Very… _well._ ” With the second word he slid the needle in at the marked point, pressed it probably further through than necessary, and tugged it free again. Set the slightly bloodied potato aside, snatched up the sterilized earring, wiped the beading blood aside with another cotton bud, and slotted the little titanium post into place, its backstop clicking on behind. “There. Still want me to do the second one?”

Sephiroth’s expression had briefly become one of surprise, and now settled into startlingly relaxed lines. A small smile pulled at his mouth. “ _I_ don’t do things halfway.”

Genesis sputtered. Angeal laughed.

* * *

Sephiroth, at Genesis’ direction, took a very small sip of healing potion once both earrings were in. Skin didn’t close over the posts, so he obviously hadn’t taken too much. Genesis leaned close in analysis. “Does it still hurt?”

Squinting thoughtfully, the subject reached up and gave a tug at the left post. “A little,” he concluded.

Genesis nodded, in his element with the ability to be the preeminent expert on the subject. “If it still hurts tomorrow morning, there might be an infection, so cast Esuna and drink a little more Potion. The piercing tends to last better if you let it heal naturally, but the increased odds of infection really aren’t worth it.”

“And also if someone does decide to make an issue of this body modification, I would prefer the thing already be completed.” Sephiroth swept his hair aside out of the way as he sat down again, a practiced motion to avoid sitting on it. Angeal’s eyes caught on the flick and swish, and his molars ground together.

“We have to do something,” he said abruptly. “About this.”

He waved a hand toward Sephiroth, not meaning his friend or his friend’s hair or any other fashion concern, but unsure of what exactly he did mean. Genesis was always able to find words but they weren’t necessarily the _right_ ones, and Angeal preferred not to put things into words until he knew he had ones he meant, because a man was bound by his word. You were accountable forever to what you had said, almost as much as to what you had done. And this was much too important to risk saying anything he could not stand behind.

Genesis looked startled for a second, but then straightened out of Sephiroth’s face and declared, “Absolutely. I feel the same. _Even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall forestall my return._ ”

“Besides splitting any fines,” Angeal said, because he still fully intended to do that.

“I suppose we could tell his fan club,” Genesis mused. “If Shinra should be so gauche as to take punitive action in response to personal cosmetic decisions. The negative publicity could have an impact on their use of him in propaganda.”

“That,” said Angeal, because while it _might_ work, it also involved informing the entire world, starting with the people who most looked up to him, about Sephiroth’s disadvantaged legal status, and surely Genesis hadn’t forgotten that Sephiroth was a private person? “Seems…” He gave up. “It shouldn’t be legal,” he settled for. “They shouldn’t be able to hold that over him.”

What kind of dreams were open to you, when you didn’t have free use of your own body? Angeal had realized soon enough after becoming part of SOLDIER that Shinra Company itself had very little honor, however much some of their employees kept, but that they could and did this freely trespass against the personal pride of even their strongest employee, it was…

“What do you mean to suggest?” Genesis asked, slower now and with more careful presentation than his careless rush of spoken thought from seconds ago. As though he thought Angeal was working up to some plan in particular.

Angeal shook his head. He had nothing. “I don’t know. There has to be _something_.”

“Angeal.” Sephiroth’s voice cut across everything, loud and firm and—oddly _gentle._ “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Angeal was not sure what the sting of that did to his face, but Sephiroth’s eyebrows drew together at the sight of it, and he gave an odd, slow blink. “I’m not any different from you,” he reiterated, calm insistence as if Angeal was a delicate thing to be broken by harsh words, or a child that might cry. “I— _appreciate_ your wanting to help me. But there is _nothing to be done._ Shinra owns me; Shinra owns everything. There is no higher authority to which you might appeal.

“If you somehow changed that for me, could you change it for yourself? For the rest of SOLDIER, for all the workers whose contracts are subject to revisions by management at any time—?

“Shinra owns everything,” he repeated—not a warning, not a surrender, not as far as he seemed to know. Only reminder. “You’d have to rip the world apart to change it,” his friend told him. “And what then? You’d be a terrorist, and the world would be in shreds.”

The atmosphere had drawn so tight over the course of this remarkable speech that Angeal could barely breathe it. Sephiroth still appeared perfectly calm—this had to be a lie—while Genesis seemed, astonishingly, struck speechless.

Angeal dragged in enough air to let out in a formless huffing noise, then enough again to say, “I’m flattered you think I could pull that off alone.”

Which made Genesis let out a slightly wild laugh, and banished whatever had seemed almost numinous in Sephiroth’s serenity. (Angeal felt a stab of inexplicable guilt for that which could not compete with his relief.) Sephiroth shrugged, and said something noncommittal about his faith in Angeal, and the topic was closed.

The rest of the evening passed normally. Angeal might have argued lightheartedly with Genesis a little more than usual, and Genesis might have been rather more forceful about trying to make his friends watch the play being broadcast on the Culture channel than he had been the only previous time they had both visited him together, but their Wutaian take-out arrived and they sorted out their orders with perfect normality. Angeal had thought Sephiroth might be uncomfortable after such a personal conversation, but if anything he seemed more relaxed than usual.

Sephiroth took the titanium studs out once he felt sure the piercings had fully healed, over Genesis’ objections, saying he would save the public revelation of their existence for an occasion he felt deserved it.

“If they _don’t_ do anything,” said Genesis, rather late in the evening when both of the others should already have gone home—Angeal slept on his couch sometimes, but Sephiroth certainly never had. “If they don’t do anything about the earrings, I propose that the next step is to trim your hair. Not cut it! I understand your position. It’s very nice hair. But it _is_ rather frayed at the ends, and could do with some neatening.”

“Hm,” said Sephiroth, noncommittal.

“ _Legend shall speak / of sacrifice at world’s end…_ ”

Angeal pressed a cushion into his best friend’s face. “Be quiet.”

Sephiroth smiled.

* * *

Hours later, well after Sephiroth had left the two Banorans alone and gone back to his barrack clearly having reached his limit for company, Angeal walked home in the soft breeze of night. There was nearly always wind in Midgar proper, because it was raised so far above the surrounding plains, but the outer retaining wall meant only a very little of that wind usually made it down to street level. It was summer now, and the edge of racing air that dipped low enough to ruffle at his hair was pleasant; he would have welcomed more. In winter when the air grew chilly, going outside above the wall became bitter in the extreme.

Sector Three was mostly residences. A lot of manufacturing went on in Midgar, but not here. This was a quiet, overly respectable Sector, full of freestanding buildings divided into spacious apartments with all the modern conveniences. Midgar—Shinra alone, even—employed more people than it could technically house, but there was an entire subset of the lower middle class who commuted up from nicer parts of the slums to work. You knew you had made it in Midgar if you had a place on the Plate and an official mailing address.

Angeal could afford to rent here, if he stopped sending money home to his mother and putting part of every paycheck by against hard times. It was a strange thing to look around and think.

Midgar had been a dream, for him. The shining floating city far away north, where anyone could make it if they tried. And it had delivered on every promise. He was strong, had people looking up to him already, at the age of eighteen; he had through his own efforts reached a rank and distinction that meant he stood equal with Genesis, in a way that would have been unthinkable if they had remained in Banora—he loved their hometown, as Genesis never had, but he had never been hesitant to _leave_.

This was the city of dreams, and had brought all his dreams within his grasp.

But now he looked at the neat presentable brownstones with the yellow lights shining in their windows and heard Sephiroth’s voice, like a drumbeat: _Shinra owns everything._

In Midgar this was perfectly literal—plenty of other companies were based here, even did their manufacturing here to take advantage of cheap power and easy distribution, but they all had to rent or lease their spaces. Shinra owned every strut and stone. In a way, they owned every cubic meter of air. Shinra owned it all.

 _Shinra owns my body_ was a sentence Angeal had never wanted to hear, but he couldn’t just _forget._

* * *

Sephiroth’s birthday was listed in his basic unclassified personnel file, the one they called a ‘jacket,’ as the last day in August. Genesis was back in Wutai by then, but Angeal dropped by the new-minted eighteen-year-old’s office during lunch with a cupcake he’d gone into the city to buy and a little cardboard box, which Sephiroth opened to find a pair of hand-knapped obsidian equilateral triangles that had been mounted as earrings. Genesis had chipped in half to buy them, so they were from him too, Angeal explained, and then explained about birthday presents, until Sephiroth interrupted to say he knew what they _were,_ he had merely been surprised by getting one.

“Should I have gotten you something?” he asked, toying with one earring in the open box. “You were born in February, I believe.”

Angeal shrugged. “You can get me something next year, if you want. Careful,” he added, as Sephiroth tested the edge of a triangle against the pad of his finger, “they’re sharp.”

Sephiroth smiled. “I thought you disapproved of small sharp objects.”

Angeal grinned. “They have their uses.”

Sephiroth wore them to work on a day of no particular importance a week later. So far as Angeal knew, nothing came of it whatsoever.

This outcome…wasn’t quite the relief he’d expected it to be.

* * *

The next time their deployment brought them together at the front, Angeal got himself and Sephiroth assigned a joint perimeter sweep, a slow and careful pacing-out of the jungle surrounding the latest camp, hoping to flush any lurking ninjas out of cover. So far all they’d turned up was Bizarre Bugs.

Sephiroth’s hair was a few inches shorter than he’d last seen it, the locks ending sharply in straight lines like ribbons, instead of trailing away like frayed cord. Genesis had said, in his last letter, that they’d destroyed three pairs of scissors getting it that way.

“Shinra doesn’t own Wutai,” Angeal said casually, shaking poisonous innards off his company-issued broadsword. It was the most treasonous sentence he had ever uttered.

Sephiroth slanted a look at him, sweep of shining hair concealing the nothing-much of his expression. “…not yet,” he agreed.

**Author's Note:**

> The thing about this friendship group is that Angeal and Sephiroth are each in their own ways and for their own reasons fairly conflict-averse, especially when it comes to authority. Genesis has a more rebellious temperament, but it's trickier to motivate him in useful _directions_.
> 
> So basically canon did its job and built their tragedy into their characterization, but fandom perseveres!


End file.
